I’m very excited becuase the website is getting there. We’ve switched over to the new design and are now refining the layout. Once it’s all sorted, I’ll officially launch!
APEN 2009 was a success
If you pop over to Rural Survey Specialists, Jeff has just posted a new blog about his experience at the Australasian Pacific Extension Conference held in Busselton, WA.
New website and new business – Rural Survey Specialists
I’m very excited to announce that Amy Rebecca website will be undergoing a facelift in the next couple of weeks. At the end of it all we will have a brand new look! As we are starting to get busier, I felt it was time to have a ‘proper’ website that was able to include my blog as well as detail further what we do.
I’m looking forward to showing it off soon.
In the meantime we have launched a new business with Coutts J&R called Rural Survey Specialists. I think one of the most exciting things about this new business is its focus on the rural sector and the availability of market research expertise for those who want to find out what their rural stakeholders are thinking.
It’s important to be able to connect positively with your stakeholders and often a generic approach to farmers in particular just doesn’t work. Our knowledge and combined 20 years experience allows us to understand the rural sector and help grow your relationships with your stakeholders when you want to know something, rather than just use them for information.
We’ve also developed a very useful tool – the survey cost calculator – that allows you to estimate how much it would cost to run your survey. The calculator breaks down the cost elements of the survey process from the design to the reporting. A very handy budgeting tool when you want to run a survey but aren’t sure of costs. Once you have had a play with the calculator you can then contact the Rural Survey Specialists to confirm the quote based on your particular survey needs.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Our products in a [proverbial] nutshell
I thought it would be a good idea to put together a few packages of the types of services that Amy Rebecca offers. Something I’ve discovered recently is that rather than spending 10 minutes explaining what you do to a new contact, it’s more useful if you have concrete products you can spruik.
So on a Friday afternoon, here in a [proverbial] nutshell, are four products and what they include. Following posts will discuss these in detail and nut out costs further [I can't move on from the nut - bless] – so stay tuned. In the meantime if you are interested in any of the below, I’m more than happy to talk with you.
- Undertake Surveys from the design phase to the report - You may have been running a project/program that requires a survey for data collection purposes. We can manage the whole process, from survey design, to running the survey, to reporting. Costs are set for this one and based on the survey complexity, survey numbers and type of reporting required.
- Project management – If you’re juggling a number of projects/jobs why not outsource the project management side of things? We set up a secure online central project management system where all to do lists, messages, documents etc can be stored. Once set up, the project basically runs itself! Set cost per month/quarter/week depending on level of project management required and size of project.
- Project/program evaluation - Do you need to prove to the powers that be / outside funders that your project is having an impact on intended stakeholders and is meeting objectives? Let us work with you to design an evaluation process that fits your budget and timeframe. We can then undertake the evaluation or mentor you through the process right up to the final report. Costs depend on size of evaluation and amount of involvement.
- Customised website design – Using the popular and user-friendly blogging software of Wordpress to allow you full freedom to update content, we custom design a website for you with as many pages as you like. The basic deal is we come up with two brilliant design ideas (if we say so ourselves) after initially consultation and you get to choose one which we will then modify further to fully meet your needs. The website is then all yours to do with as you wish. Prices depend on the number of inital designs requested, whether copy is required or supplied, whether you want a logo as part of the package plus any hosting charges.
So there you have Amy Rebecca in the proverbial. Am looking forward to sharing more over the next week. Also lookout for a new website design to show off our fabulous work! In the meantime, our designer, Ben Coutts, was responsible for the gorgeous Gifts in a bag website.
We expect technology to work
An event I was involved in recently had some problems with internet streaming technology. It was a fabulous global event with loads of potential for information dissemination and cross media platform interactions and it was all very exciting. However, when the day arrived, technical problems were numerous which put a little bit of a dampener on the overall feeling of the success of the day – even thought most people understood and were happy to watch the podcast at a later date. Still, as I was experiencing the technical problems first hand, I found myself becoming frustrated and disappointed with the overall experience. I expected the technology to work and felt let down that it didn’t.
It’s interesting looking at this in light of the fact that the internet itself is a relatively new technology in the scheme of things and how reliant we’ve become on it – particularly in business. I couldn’t operate without a computer or the internet and the thought of not being able to access email makes me break out in a cold sweat. In addition, a slow connection speed causes me a slight bout of e-rage and a ‘time-out’ on a website upload leads to a mild ’shaking-of-the-fist at the monitor’ syndrome.
Since when have we become so reliant upon technology, why do we expect it to work and why do we get so stressed when it doesn’t?
In pondering this question, I’ve come to the conclusion that technology is made by humans, humans aren’t perfect, therefore technology isn’t perfect. So I’ve decided to cut technology some slack and come up with some back up strategies for when technology fails.
- Use the phone – I actually think that we’ve become afraid of the phone. I know in most cases I would rather send an email than just pick up the phone and call someone. Am I becoming more antisocial due to technology despite the fact that I’m actually connected to more people?
- Write a letter - This used to be the only way that businesses communicated once upon a time. Maybe if the email goes down for a longer length of time, send a hand penned letter explaining what happened and that you will be back online as soon as possible. How’s that for the personal touch!
- Use a paper and pen – Now I can actually type all day but find that when I pick up a paper and pen to take notes or write, I cramp up in a matter of minutes! This is not necessarily a good thing. In my opinion writing things down or drawing pictures can actually be a more creative way of working than typing words on a page. Maybe you’ll have your best idea in years if your computer breaks down.
- Read the paper/a journal/a magazine – Forget the blogs and online news sites. Go back to the good old fashioned printed word. If the internet is down and you need to update your knowledge, head down to the newsagency and buy the paper and/or the latest edition of a magazine in your area of business. Could be the best thing you do that day.
- Take a break – Have a cuppa, raid the fridge/lolly drawer, go grab one of those coffees from the corner cafe – after all stress is a killer and I’m not entirely sure that it’s worth dying over a downed server. A break could be what saves your life!
Any other ideas? I think I’ll be ok next time I’m let down by technology…now where’s that pen and paper.
A little self promotion
I’m going to do a little bit of self promotion here for another business I’m involved in – Gifts in a bag. On Tuesday, this week we had a story in the business section of the local paper and it also appeared online – the Sunshine Coast Daily News.
In my opinion this is a great place to start for a small business, as the local paper is usually well read and amd a good way to ‘get the message out’. Our challenge now is to build some momentum and see if we can start to build a profile – on a budget that is currently negative!
This is where a little bit of PR (already working with a story in the paper), networking and word of mouth comes into it. These are the strategies we’ll be using over the next few months to take the next baby steps.
Wish us luck – or even better – buy something from us!
When program management works
I’ve just finished an evaluation project with Coutts J&R for Land & Water Australia. It was a review of the Defeating the Weeds Menace R&D program from the researcher perspective.
One of the elements of the project was looking at the performance of the program management. As a little bit of background, this program involved multiple research projects and required dealing with a number of different stakeholders including government, education, science, NRM and agriculture.
Without going into too much detail about the process, overall we found that this program’s management was particularly good and it was thought by some that it could be a model for future research programs.
For myself, there were a couple of principles that really stood out and could be applied to any project/program management situation.
- A clean flow of information between stakeholders will cut any problem down to size. If stakeholders are kept informed of the processes and kept inside a circle of common understanding, then there should be elasticity in the process for solving any unforseen problems (large or small).
- There is no subsitute for personal contact. One of the major highlights of this project was the way in which the program coordinator personally interacted with all the stakeholders. A very high level of goodwill was created through the coordinator’s real interest in the research projects.
- Attitude rules. This often comes down to the personality/ies in charge of the program management. Enthusiastic, positive, available and responsive are attributes that we found were appreciated in this review. The right attitudes to program management could pay real dividends in terms of outcomes.
I’d love to add to this list. Let me know your thoughts.
April QualDATA newsletter out
The April QualDATA newlsetter is out – with a little revamp in looks and content. Check it out.